Halloween is just around the corner. If you're looking for some appropriate bluegrass mood music, here are a few suggestions:
"Bringing Mary Home"
This is the all-time, No. 1, goosebumps-guaranteed, bluegrass Halloween tune. It's a must play.
In 1965, the Country Gentlemen took this song about a little ghost girl to No. 43 on the country charts. It should have gone a lot higher.
Other artists have recorded it. And any version is good. But you can find the Gentlemen's version on Rebel's new Country Gentlemen compilation, "Can't You Hear Me Callin': Early Classics 1963-1969."
It's a tale about a driver stopping one night on a lonely stretch of highway to pick up a pale little girl. She asks him to take her home. But when he turns into the driveway she shows him, the back seat is empty.
A woman comes to the door and sadly explains that 13 years ago that night, her little girl was killed in a wreck. But each year, she tries to come home.
Play that in your car on a dark night sometime.
"Long Black Veil"
When Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkins wrote this eerie song in 1959, it became an instant folk classic.
It's a story about an innocent man hanged for murder because he refuses to tell where he was at the time - "in the arms of my best friend's wife."
OK, it's hard to imagine that happening today. But this story is set in an era of public hangings.
the man is executed, his lover stood in the crowd and "shed not a tear." But 10 years later, she walks the hills in a long, black veil and weeps over his bones as the night winds wail.
B-r-r-r.
A couple of recent versions can be found on John Duffey's "Always In Style" and Jerry Garcia's "The Pizza Tapes."
"Simon Crutchfield's Grave"
The McPeak Brothers did the definitive version of this song on their 1992 "Classic Bluegrass" album. But others have recorded it.
According to the story, Simon and Mary Crutchfield let Riley Harper move in with them on their farm. There was apparently some hanky-panky going on while Simon worked the fields.
Anyway, Simon turned up dead. And Riley was afraid to drive past his grave.
When a blizzard destroys the crops in 1864, the only way to town is past the grave. And an old fur trapper finds Mary and Riley dead on the floor of their cabin.
They apparently starved to death because they couldn't pass the grave.
Moral to this tale: Don't bury people by the road.
"The Midnight Call"
A man gets a late-night call from his mother, asking him to meet her at a railroad depot that was torn down years ago in this eerie tale from Tom T. & Dixie Hall. It's the title cut of Don Rigsby's brand new album on Sugar Hill.
The man awakes to find that it was just a dream. But when his phone rings, he knows that his mother is dead.
What makes this especially spooky is that it sounds so possible.
"Bluestone Mountain"
Rigsby must like spooky songs.
This cut from his "Empty Old Mailbox" album tells the tale of a Civil War widow who became lost in a cave while searching for her lost son.
When the wind moans, you can still hear her calling his name.
Another good one to play in the car on a dark night.
"Ballad of Maudie Dawson"
This one comes from Longview's "High Lonesome" album.
It tells the story of a woman the community thinks murdered her husband and may even be a witch.
She finds a lost boy one night and leads him home through the dark. But the townspeople think she harmed him. And she's lynched before he can set them straight.
The next day, her missing husband returns. Seems he'd just left town to ramble awhile.
Bluegrass, like folk music, has always had plenty of tales of murder and tragedy.
If you're looking for a quick fix - one album that has it all - pick up CMH's "American Gothic: Bluegrass Songs of Death and Sorrow."
Talk about deathgrass!
"Little Blossom" is beaten to death by her drunken father. Another little girl talks to her parents on her deathbed in "I Hear A Sweet Voice Calling." And a lost girl dies of a snake bite in "The Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake."
Charlie Lawson's 1929 murder of his wife and children - and eventual suicide - is celebrated in "The Ballad of the Lawson Family." "The Wexford Girl" is beaten to death with a club by her lover. And "Poor Ellen Smith" is also murdered.
"Barbara Allen" dies for Sweet William after he dies for love of her. "Young Charlotte" freezes to death because she's too vain to wear a coat over her ball gown. "Darlin' Corey," a female moonshiner, is gunned down by the law.
"There's a dark and troubled side of life," they sing, and it's all right here.
Happy Halloween.
©2003, Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, Ky). Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
